Cooperative Store

A cooperative store and hall, dating from 1901, was rebuilt in the early 1980s as a department store behind a retained facade. Designed by Austin and Paley for the Lancaster and Skerton Equitable Industrial Cooperative Society Ltd., the building is constructed of sandstone ashlar with slate roofs. It has a deep L-shaped plan extending along Church Street and New Street, with a prominent canted corner bay serving as the main entrance. The design is in a Free Northern Renaissance style, featuring 8 bays along Church Street and 9 bays along New Street, articulated by projecting pilasters. The corner bay’s round-headed doorway is heavily decorated with strapwork. Above the doorway is a semicircular oriel dated 1901, with a 5-light square-headed mullioned and transomed window topped by strapwork cresting. This supports a carved Lancashire rose above a panelled cartouche displaying the Lancaster Cooperative Society’s beehive symbol. The ground floor originally had windows, now replaced by arcaded openings with segmental arches on half-octagonal piers, banded rustication, and a shallow panelled frieze. The sixth bay along New Street retains the flat lintel of a former entrance to the Cooperative Hall, identifiable by its wide 3-bay gable. First-floor windows are arranged in pairs, with round-headed or square-headed windows featuring mullions and transoms. A deep frieze, decorated with strapwork and a raised letter inscription, runs above the first-floor windows. The second floor exhibits a picturesque arrangement of gables, with cross windows under segmental pediments near the corner and taller, wider mullioned windows under wider Flemish gables towards the ends. This is considered the finest of the Cooperative shops and buildings designed by Austin and Paley around 1900 in a Free Northern Renaissance idiom.